up before sunrise!!

So yesterday around 4:30 I had to say goodbye to a moogie who'd partied with me aaaaall weekend. We had drinkin times, we had Amish times---and really had a ton of fun!! But when I came home through the demon hell ride of a rainstorm and checked out my schedule for Surgery rotation the next day, I found something quite special:

HERSHEY MEDICAL CENTER students
ONSITE: Report as directed, at Orientation. Students rotating in Orthopedic Surgery report at 6AM to C3862, Ortho Conference Room (prior to Orientation on Day 1).

!!!!!!

Frantic emails and phone calls ensued, with no hope of answers of course because now it is Sunday at 6:30 PM, and for some odd reason, faculty don't check their email every hour on the hour like I do!

So last night was me trying to go to bed at 11; then about 15 dreams in a row about being late, then waking up when someone went to the bathroom, another sweet dream about losing all of the hair on the top of my head AND being late because of it, then finally the 5 AM alarm.

Then I did my morning powerwalk of near-tardiness. I prefer to think of it as the brisk stride of near-punctuality, but I know better. What I think happened at 6 AM in the Ortho conference room was something called "Rounds." They are SUPPOSED to talk about each patient in-depth; in Medicine, rounds can last for hours as they debate why the potassium is 0.3 off. But on Ortho, this is what happens instead, and it lasts a total of 1.9 minutes for about 50 patients:
"Smith?" "Fine."
"Houcek?" "She's fine."
"Kane?" "Fine."
"Wisner?" "Off the list."
"Stagg?" "Fine."
"O'Connor?" "Switched Rooms."
"Schneider?" "Fine."
"Pham?" "Crashing."

I was asked what year I was and said "first" instead of "third," but a classmate helped me out. At least I had classmates there and it made me feel better. I understood very little of what was said about the radiographs being presented. I did know the answer to one thing! Lytic lesions on bone make you think FIRST of metastasis. The guy doing the presentation was none other than Shawn Price, which of course made me smile---except that he is an African American man and not my big Irish Eeyore. And all I could think was "God, this guy is sooooo tired." But he did a good job anyway, what with all the rapid-fire orders and questions.

After the presentation of the new cases, a chief resident started saying things like "Ok, I know this is a high-stress situation and we're all going to have disagreements and arguments..." It sounded like it was gonna be REALLY good; but then it was noticed that med students were almost outnumbering residents and we essentially were, nicely, kicked out. I mean, everyone was really nice, not condescendingly even, the whole morning. Our time had just been up.

It's 15 minutes to go to see if I was supposed to even be there this morning; 15 minutes til people shuffle into their offices or listen to their messages. 15 minutes til the bookstore and library open. I got out of rounds and thought well, I should go home and put on some deodorant cuz I definitely forgot that part. And make some tea.

Oh and I already have a crush on a chief resident based on looks alone. =)